Your healthcare practice website is more than just an internet-based business card. It is an online tool for making every aspect of your practice accessible to your patients as needed. It is also your number one tool for generating new patients.
Understand that your practice is a business as much as an avenue for dispensing healthcare services. If you want to generate new healthcare patients, you have to also think of them as customers. With that mindset, you can employ many of the same SEO principles that businesses in other sectors employ to turn casual visitors into paying customers.
We have put together a collection of helpful tips that can improve your healthcare practice website. Employ them and you should start generating more patients. If no one in your office knows how, let’s talk. We are here to help you make the most of your healthcare website.
1. Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
Next to the judicious use of targeted keywords, the next most important thing you can do for your website is to make it mobile friendly. Every year, more people are turning to their mobile devices as the primary means of accessing the internet. Mobility is so important that Google now ranks it. Google’s emphasis on mobile is a clear indication that your website will suffer if it is not mobile friendly.
2. Optimize for Speed
Google also ranks page load times. The faster your site, the better it will perform in searches. What can you do in this regard? Optimize your site for speed. It starts with making sure your web hosting provider is a top-tier provider. If you are paying for budget services, you might be getting budget speeds.
Next, optimize your pictures and graphics by making them only as large as necessary. Uploading oversized graphics and expecting browsers to resize them for you only slows your page down. As far as the other elements on your site are concerned, evaluate their necessity. Plug-ins, scripts, widgets, etc. all take time to load. Get rid of what you don’t need in order to make your site as fast as possible.
3. Simplify Site Navigation
Website visitors do not appreciate having to endlessly click around to find the information they are after. They want to land on your site, find what they need, and leave. You can help by simplifying your site’s navigation. Although there is no hard and fast rule, giving patients access to relevant information in three clicks or less makes for a very good user experience. You can accomplish this by using a hierarchal structure supported by menus and sub-menus.
4. Create and Publish Useful Content
Quality content designed around SEO principles improves search performance and drives traffic. If you want to convert first-time visitors into paying customers however, you need to take your content one step further. It needs to be useful as well.
Useful SEO content is content that your patients can do something with. For example, a series of posts discussing some of the treatments your practice offers is content that gives your patients options to think about. That’s the kind of information they want to. That is what gets them interested in your practice.
5. Optimize for Local Search
Finally, local search is critical for healthcare practices. You can generate more new customers from your site if you optimize it for local search. Local optimization is accomplished through a variety of strategies including Google business listings, off-site citations, localized keywords, etc.
At WebTek Digital Marketing, healthcare is one of our specialties. Contact us to learn more about how we can turn your website into a patient-generating machine.
